


the milk of human kindness

by amitye



Category: Carrie - Stephen King
Genre: (only Tommy and Carrie's mom), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character expected to die but didn't and has no idea how to live anymore. Other helps & comforts, Character's abusive childhood is revealed, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Intrusive Thoughts, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse, Recovery, Teen Pregnancy, Violence, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24134599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/pseuds/amitye
Summary: After the night of the Dark Prom passes without serious damage to anyone but Carrie's heart, Sue and Carrie have to build their futures together.
Relationships: Susan Snell/Carrie White
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	the milk of human kindness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



Carrie's feet hurt from a thousand stings, but she kept walking. She had kicked her heels off just out of the school's parking lot - another little shame piling up over her head, another little _oh, did you really this could ever be meant for you?_ \- and now she could walk easily, without turning back, her burning house behind her and absolutely nothing in front of her.  
She held her arms protectively crossed over the soaked neckline of her dress as if holding an imaginary shawl, shivering despite the warm spring night, and a voice in her head berated that she wouldn't be cold if she wasn't dressed like such a floozy and, though another voice tried to drown it out with whatever small repertoire of swear words she could offer, most of her head was convinced that nothing else would have happened either, that it was only the sin of Eve come again in every twirling girl in the school gym and hers - oh hers was the worst of all because she had been so well raised and she could easily have avoided it if only she had been good and obedient - hers had been paid with Tommy's blood, sweet gallant Tommy Ross's apple-red blood pooling up on the stage.  
Always blood.  
Carrie sat down and rubbed it away from her eyes, blinking furiously, but what she could scrub off only dripped down her arms and dress. Her hands twitched in an instinctive attempt to push it away from her for good, the same way she had done with the snickering cheerleaders on the stage, but clearly that was not how her skill - _magicpowercursesinsinsin_ \- worked.  
She didn't know if she cared. Carrie, for all that she had dreamed to be pretty, charming, clever, loved and occasionally happy, had never dreamed of being powerful.  
Yet for a moment, when she was standing fire-eyed on the stage, she had the clearest vision of the ballroom falling over in a heap of blood, fire and electricity as she stood in the middle of it, a statuesque figure basked in light. But in the end the circle of crackling flames around her cleared and all that was left was a chunky, hunched over, crying girl with hair hanging like straw and the eyes of a prey animal who could only push away the circle of inquisitive eyes forming around her with a graceless snap of the air and run off.  
_Then you must know it's time to go home and forget this disaster, little girl,_ the voice said, but Carrie's legs were not cooperating. Carrie shivered and thought of the story of the little matchgirl, but the air was not cold enough to freeze and Carrie was not sweet and innocent anymore, nor did she have any particularly sweet grandmother to call her to heaven, and in the morning she would just be a chilly, sneezing hooker for the neighborhood to ogle.  
_Stand up, go home, this doesn't have to go like this,_ the voice went on, conjuring images of home, safety, chocolate cake, mama's hugs, mama who had told her this would not lead nowhere good and might still let her come in her arms if she admitted it, fell on her knees and beat her breast. _Oh wait, you can’t?_  
She buried her face between her knees. 

"Carrie"  
The voice came from the street corner and Carrie took a while to realize it wasn't in her head.  
Sue was standing on the sidewalk in her white nightgown and pink robe, her hair braided, effortlessly pretty and sweet. It was so strange.  
Ugliness was painful and beauty was pain to wield, but up close, Susan was neither.  
"Carrie, Tommy' s mother called me from the hospital, you must be so scared. Those horrible girls, I can't believe I used to-"  
She bit her apple-red lower lip. She outstretched her hand. Carrie took it timidly and stood up, but she could not speak, nor look at Sue in the eye.  
There were no tears on her cheeks, yet she knew - not just from looking in her eyes, for she wasn’t looking her eyes, but from some kind of feeling - that Tommy was dead, but she didn’t have the courage to mention it and Sue didn’t seem to want either.  
She visualized herself having that courage - running in her arms, laying her head on Sue’s chest, crying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” - but she did not, and a voice in her head, different from the one she’d heard before, made her shiver, booming “You know it was not your fault”

“Let’s go home.” Sue said.  
Carrie followed in a blur, a cold piece of meat except for the radiating flame where her hand touched Sue’s. She was led through a driveway, a dark corridor and into a bathroom - her toes curled against the soft pink rag and she barely had time to wince, thinking about the blood and grime on her soles, before Sue started removing her dress and she almost stopped breathing.  
Sue’s warm finger brushed against her hips, soft, uncritical, slightly ticklish. She examined the torn fabric of her dress and shook her head, chuckling softly. “All this trouble to be pretty.”  
She said, or thought, bitterly, half in disbelief.  
“It’s not that -” Carrie started, but she didn’t know how to explain the whole matter of the thing, about ugliness being pain and the pain of never, never once having been seen by someone, or looked at with love. She didn’t think she could understand that.  
“Oh…”  
Sue’s breath hitched as her fingers found the cut on her shoulder blade. “Bitches fucking beat you up too?”  
Carrie burst out laughing, bitter and slightly hysterical, at how incongruous those words felt with Sue's angel face and worried voice, digging bloody fingers in her cheeks  
Sue looked at her sorrowfully, worry lines softening her face. She squeezed Carrie's hand. "I'd better start the bath." 

It was a little awkward, to stand in front of Sue for ten good minutes, holding her hand, neither knowing what to say to comfort the other. Sue remarked that she should have thought to start it earlier, Carrie attempted to smile with the corner of her mouth and Sue beamed up to her eyes.  
When the tub was full she turned around so Carrie could take off her underwear. Carrie confusedly endured the slight prick of disappointment that gave her without bothering to analyze it and soaked in the water, blood peeling off her like a pink bubble bath. It was almost pretty.  
"I never had bath salts" she mumbled, half closing her eyes against the warm embrace of the water.  
"What?" Sue bounced on her feet and leaned closer, eyes wide and attentive.  
Carrie couldn't hold her glance. "I never had anything pretty, or sweet, or… Anything nice at all. I kept thinking maybe someday the moment would come, that it does have to come at some point and it never did. I thought maybe the prom…"

She bit her tongue. It was so obvious in hindsight nothing, absolutely nothing pretty or sweet would come of - sin - such blatant self delusion. She didn't want Sue to think that, so she opened her mouth to change the subject as fast as possible, but she couldn't think of anything. Her mind was fully blank.  
Sue stroked her hair gently, pitifully, such that if Carrie had any reason to have any pride she might have felt offended. "Will you tell me what happened to you?" 

Carrie looked down in the water, noticing with an half-hearted blush that, for all of Sue's modesty, it was far too low to fully hide her breasts. She did not wish to lie to Sue, but she did not know where to begin.  
She clung to her hand, wincing breathlessly when she sympathetically brushed her bare shoulder.  
_I killed my mother,_ the very shiny, new, never heard before voice in her said triumphantly, no trace of shame whatsoever. That could not be true - that was not Carrie, it was a sin to end all sins and she loved her, for all her flaws, and she could not be perfect and a good little girl had to realize how hard it was for her to raise her all alone in such a sinful, tempting, deceitful world.  
No one could prove it was her - no one could prove Carrie could do anything more than what any other teenage girl must do everyday - _break her mother's heart_ in the most poetic, storybook sense of the word. Then why did she want to say it out loud so badly, to taste her own boldness and rebellion on her tongue and see Sue's face change when she realized what the meek little lamb she had taken under her protection had done? 

She savored it for five full seconds, sighing deeply, then eluded Sue's glance and buried her face in her hands.  
"I've done something bad" she mumbled, too overcome with shame to explain, and Sue stroked her hair and kissed her cheek.  
"We always hurt you so much. You've done nothing you can blame yourself for."  
Carrie knew she was talking only about her nightmare of a prom - about her anger, maybe, probably about Tommy although he was so jarringly the last thing on either of their minds. Yet, wildly, some part of her hoped that somehow their minds had found each other in the electric cloud she felt pulsating around her temples, that she had unloaded herself into her without need of words.  
That she knew and she understood and maybe…  
Maybe she could love her? 

Carrie leaned her cheek onto Sue's palm, and wept until she couldn't go on anymore. 

*** 

In the following week, they went to two funerals, Tommy's and her mother's, and a court date to decide for her fate, and in each occasion a Sue brushed her hair, picked clothes for her and did her make up as she sat through the process as lifeless as a doll. Her mother was dead, her house burnt down and she too old to draw much interest in even the most charitably inclined families. It was an easy choice to dump her in Sue’s house until a nebulously defined “start of college”, and Sue’s parents seemed to find the idea theoretically pleasing enough to accept it. 

Carrie was pleasantly surprised of how often her input was asked, on a matter of principle, but didn’t have much of an idea of what to do about it. College has never been in the plans, and the idea of looking for a job right now - her sewing machine had been destroyed The Night Of The Ball and no one would leave her alone with a child right now - and spending whole days under harsh lights in some unflattering uniform in a chattering crowd made her feel faint.  
She had just never been able to think of the future at all, ever. Every little bite of something that felt like progress - her sewing jobs, the Christian Youth Summer Camp, someone sitting next to her at lunch and making small talk about their classes, God even the occasional boys whistling at her on the way to school, _the boys come next sniffing her blood like hounds_ \- was as unexpected, unreal and seemingly life changing to her as if an angel had materialized in her room to swell her womb with child, and every little bite vanished without leaving trace soon.  
If she went to college, it would be after a gap year at this point, that was clear, even a story as tragic as hers she could only get so much pity, but Sue seemed completely unbothered by the fact when she laid with her on the little bed in the guest room and talked about sewing some nice quilts for their future dorm room, asked her if she liked English or Maths better and if she had ever been in any clubs, maybe in middle school, before things started to go so wrong - things had never not been wrong, but she didn’t have the courage to say that.

She replied as much as she could, her mind clouded over, her eyes tearing up with the anger of her lost sixteen years every time she realized she could not possibly have a way to answer that.  
Sue lit up at every new information and she could perceive the scaffolding on her mind form slowly, filling the blanks with hesitant images of Carrie’s childhood and Carrie’s favorite songs and Carrie’s uncertain scraps of likes and dislikes. She didn’t see much value in such information - God knew anyway how much of it was true and how much was what her mother had told her to like and dislike, she thought angrily, choking back tears - and while it was sweet, it was a very different feeling from the way Tommy had said she was beautiful at the prom, and as soon as that thought formed she wondered why she had associated two so different thoughts, especially since it very much should hurt her to think of Tommy, if she had a heart.

After finals, Carrie mentioned the prom for the first time. It was also the first time she changed the subject or took control of the conversation in any way.  
Sue was talking about dresses and brands and Carrie remembered out loud of how Frieda had commented on her dress, said how pretty it was and asked where she had gotten it.  
That was such a obvious sign they were all on it, she said sadly. No one could have said that sincerely to her.  
Sue burst out laughing then, gracefully covering her mouth with her palm. “Frieda? Oh, you can’t possibly think she’d be onto something like that. She’s had her share of sneering too.”  
Carrie shrugged her shoulders. She was at a place, in the pyramid hierarchy or whatever that was of Ewen High School, where every intermediate step of the pyramid was blurred together by the steep perspective and all she could see was an unattainable golden peak. Faces had become indistinguishable half a hour after her grand entrance at the prom.  
“Wasn’t everyone onto it, more or less? Everyone laughed” she whimpered miserably, leaning onto Sue’s shoulder like a tired little girl.  
“Chris, Billy and a few of his pi- his dogs of friends were involved. No one else was.”  
She bit her lip, her face darkening. Her voice was unbearably soft when she started again. “Look, I know everyone was laughing. People are horrible like that. I laughed when they… well, when you had your period, remember? Everyone was and I couldn’t help it and I will regret it until I die, but I did. People are… no, not horrible, but they’re weak. It doesn’t mean they all hated you.”  
“I can believe they didn’t hate me” Carrie said fully honestly - _you hate wolves or snakes but not fat slimy frogs you can just walk over, isn’t that so_ \- but Sue didn’t seem to believe her much.  
“You know, I talked to a reporter at Tommy’s funeral. He wanted to know if he was part of the plan and I said no, I asked - well, I couldn’t make it so I told him to take you so you’d have a fun night and make friends and the like. And he smiled and nodded, but then I heard him tell his partner that it was all a load of bull and he was definitely on it, that on the school-yard the weak bird doesn’t get lifted off the ground and taught how to fly but pecked to death or something of that kind. At a kid’s funeral. And I just thought… it’s not true. It can’t be. We’re weak and horrible and stupid kids, but we’re human beings. We can be better. Don’t you think?”  
Carrie didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She didn’t know anyone enough to form an opinion of human nature, and she had a confused memory of the Bible saying all men were created in God’s image and saved from sin by his sacrifice and love, but Carrie’s experience of God did nothing to convince her that that image was anything good.  
“I don’t know. When I was in that gym… I just wanted to kill them all.”  
She gasped the words out like poison, wincing at their harshness, but they were true. Surely that was worth something?  
Sue winced a little too, but she didn’t scream, didn’t look at her in horror, didn’t wrench the cross from the wall and point it at her. “I know” she said. “I just hope you never have to feel that way again.”

***

Carrie’s nightmares of how dull life after prom would be didn’t turn out to be so different from reality, in its essence. There was a lot of sitting awkwardly on the couch watching TV programs she could not focus on, a lot of awkward family dinners. She and Sue went out, but mostly on their own, going for coffee, buying fashion magazines they read in the park, distractedly, pushing each other on the swings, sunbathing in shorts and camisoles. Carrie felt silly for not being able to strip down to her underwear, and even worse when she realized it was not her mother’s voice preventing her - _that went away real fast, didn’t it? What a loving daughter, what a good girl, weren’t you just waiting for this all along? Did you even shed a tear?_ \- but something else, something she didn’t have the words to describe.  
It was not even well- deserved shame about her body, because at some point, although Sue was religiously avoiding anyone from their grade and Carrie could only enthusiastically approve of that, there was a pool party with some neighbors at which she did wear a bathing suit and talk to a boy and even swim, disappointingly unexciting as she found the whole thing, so it had to be something else.  
For all that she had bemoaned the stupid prom as the first and last excitement she would ever know, she didn’t want much excitement at all. Going dancing, drinking, dating, all that - she felt strangely inhibited - not morally, again, nothing that might show she had been lovingly raised to be chaste and good, _wretchedungratefulstupidgirlasshewas._  
But she felt unready, unprepared for the life of a seventeen year old girl as she would have been to walk in space. She had not lived anything of the life she should have lived, she thought resentfully, she had not been eight or ten or thirteen and lived the little excitements of every step - her life went through her eyes like a blur, untethered. The slightest act of independence, of existing in public, any conversation she just happened into walking down the street, natural and neighborly and, reasonably, not at all exciting, was overwhelming to her.  
I’ve always been alone, she thought one night when Sue yawned and wrapped her arms around her waist, pretending to sleep when she looked at her in alarm. No one has ever talked to me sweetly, no one has ever held like this. 

Mr Snell found her in the early morning in his fishing closet, crying, her - bare! - shoulders scratched all over, praying furiously _but of course I was held and of course I was loved, I had a mommy who tried so hard with me and I broke her heart but that was not her fault oh she was always sweet and kind and everything was for my own good._  
He made some joke about hysterical girls on their periods - no, he thought that. He asked if she was alright and told her to go back to bed, that was what mattered, and even if she thought that, it was not true that God punished people for their secret thoughts, it was a lie that had been said to her and thoughts were free, thoughts were free.  
It was only her own that still felt as trapped as if someone could steal them from her head if she peeked out of the prayer closet.  
She ran back to bed and threw her arms back around Sue's waist with vindictive pleasure. 

Once Sue was up - well rested, lovely, not in any rush anymore and reveling in it - she brought up over breakfast that a neighborhood old lady cat had had kittens and they could go see them and maybe get one.  
She was placid and delighted, and Carrie almost choked on her cereal. She did not know why. There was nothing exciting about that was there? It was calm and neighborly. 

Yet her hand was sweating a disgusting way when they walked to the old lady's house, her arms trembling all over when Sue, smiling from ear to ear, deposed a small orange boy in her cupped palms.  
Carrie had to steady herself to not drop the poor baby, her thumb trailing aimlessly on its soft fur. Sue's hands were particularly long and slender and her mind was overcome with a very pleasant warmth, softness and feeling of being held and safe that she didn't know if it came from herself, the kitten, Sue or… Something else.  
"And we can actually take it?" She asked her, a red warmth blossoming in her cheeks in disbelief. _I never had anything sweet._

"Of course"  
Sue gave her one of her beaming smiles. "I never had a kitten before, you know? I had a little mutt when I was smaller, very loyal, wagging his tail for everyone who had a nice word for him. The cutest. But I think I really am more of a cat person, it just took me a lot to figure out."  
Carrie had never had either cats or dogs, only a short lived goldfish from her first and last trip to the traveling fair, and didn't bother to decipher the melancholy glint in Sue's eyes.

They brought the kitten home in a cardboard box and she laid down with her head on Sue’s lap, twirling a yarn ball around to watch him fight, baring his ridiculously pink, tiny paws and rolling on his back. Carrie tried to tickle him on the belly, but only got a pitifully small, but very valiant attempt at a scratch.  
“He’s very warlike, and ginger, like a true Scotsman. We should call him Macduff.”  
Sue declared, scratching his head.  
“Nerd” she said, rolling her eyes but with no real attempt to hide the fondness.

When they were revising Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sue had told her to remember that the ones listing off body parts were always satirical, that a woman’s beauty when she was truly loved was meant to be taken in whole and detailed description was the work of immature boys more enamoured with their wit than with the lady in question.  
Carrie wasn’t sure about that - when they were in school, she definitely took in Sue’s beauty whole - like the sun, overpowering and threatening, with the potential to become violence at any moment. Now she was split, but not in body parts, but in moments - she was beautiful suntanning by the pool, reading and going on about books with the enthusiasm of a child who had always been encouraged in everything she did, giving her a good night kiss on the cheek, laughing outrageously at some bit of gossip, dancing wildly in her bedroom, holding her hands out for Carrie to be twirled around.

It was no less beautiful, and far less overwhelming.  
And now there was something else too, a little creature with beautiful tiny fingers, beautiful soft little feet, a beautiful sweet face and beautiful thoughts, nothing but warmth, joy, the sense of being safe and held, the way maybe Carrie had felt too, before she was greeted on the way out by a kitchen knife.  
"Sue" she asked, hesitantly laying her palm over her bare stomach. "When are you going to tell your parents?" 

She braced herself for screaming and scandalized words, but Sue only shrugged. "As late as I can. I will, I promise, but I'm so happy about it and I want to be just happy for a while still before there's a discussion."  
She nodded. "That's fine. I'm happy about it too."  
They relaxed for a moment. Carrie closed her eyes, enjoying the warm feeling when the kitten licked her fingers and breathing in Sue's scent.  
"How long have you known?"  
Carrie bit her lip. "From right away, I think. I have an intuition, for this sort-"  
"I know" 

She shifted around, leaning her cheek on her palm and lazily stroking Macduff's ears.  
"Carrie, when you said that you _pushed_ Chris down the stage… you really didn't do that, right? Not… With your hands?"  
Carrie looked down, her breath quickening rapidly. It would not be so hard to deny, she might even find out she could reach into Sue's mind and extract that thought, but she found she didn't want to do that.  
"No" she admitted, closing her eyes again. "I can… Do some things. I don't know exactly everything I can, but… Are you going to tell people?" 

She jumped up anxiously. Sue stroked her cheek. "Just tell me if it's a boy or a girl and we're good."  
She giggled. "Girl"  
"Thank God."

***

In late August, when the time to change wardrobes came and Sue's stomach was sticking out softly, they went to the mall.  
Carrie didn't like this one bit. It felt a bit clichéd, she knew, and she tried to explain it to Sue in the food court, but she only laughed so hard she almost choked on the hot chocolate.  
"God, but you're an overthinker" she said, shaking her head sadly. "Moreover, we're out of high-school for good now, and you, Carrie White, are much more than a cliche, whichever one you think applies to you."  
She rolled her eyes. "Just the one. Bitter ugly frog who disapproves of what she cannot enjoy."  
"I was thinking more on the line of badass, unconventional witch who doesn't care about pretty dresses or what people think of her."  
"I care a great deal for both of these things."  
Sue laughed and stood up, pulling at her hand in the direction of the nearest shop. "See? Far more than a cliche. Now let's go conform a bit." 

Carrie was touched, on an emotional level, but not convinced.  
"These are so poorly made" she kept complaining, sometimes startling other customers and attracting sordid glances, which she didn't mind too much. She was used to getting them for much less than this.  
"This looks so soft and flowy, but up close it's pretty much a plastic bag. These darts are nonexistent, it will look like a tent on anyone with more than a B cup, 'fitted' my ass."  
'I like you opinionated" Sue giggled, delighted.  
"Now, this one is overpriced and I could make it for you for five bucks for the material. This color is horrid. I could go through this entire place and not find one dress where the waist sits at a girl' s natural's fucking waist. And where are the pockets? My mother used to say… "

She stopped. It wasn't a particularly useful guideline, to say any skirt without pockets big enough to hold a small Bible was a garment designed for the perdition of the soul, admittedly practical as the principle was.  
"You never finish those sentences. You never talk about her." Susan said softly - no accusation to it, just mild, matter-the-fact complaint.  
Carrie swallowed.  
"I really should start making clothes for you" she dejected, although she had absolutely no intention. Clothing herself was a fair objective for her best efforts and by default, almost inherently an improvement. Clothing someone like Sue was a responsibility, and the thought of running a meter all over her almost naked body… no, there was no way she could do that. 

Sue picked up on the subject change with all the ease of a former prom queen candidate, flashing a bright smile. "For the baby too, alright?"  
Carrie found that a little more agreeable. "I have no patterns for baby clothes, though. We'll need to buy some onesies so I can take them apart and figure it out."  
"Bummer."  
Sue examined a floral blouse and tossed it to Carrie. "Is this your style?"  
"The buttons are revolting and I don't think a season that fits this sleeve length even exists, but the fabric is cute” she admitted begrudgingly. “There’s no harm in stocking up with cheap stuff I can repurpose, I guess.”  
Sue squeezed her hand and let out a dreamy sigh. “You know what? Your creativity is wasted on onesies. I want you to make her clothes up to her fucking prom dress.”  
“I doubt she’d want a prom dress from some random weird woman. God knows what will even be hot stuff for teenagers by then.”  
“Some random woman!” Sue laughed like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard, handing their pile of clothes to the cashier.  
Carrie had a vague feeling of being teased, but she could not, no matter how hard she pushed herself, think of how much she would even be in this child and Sue’s lives past the toddler years at most. 

She didn’t have time to brood over that, because Sue dragged her to the photo booth right out the make up store. “Come on, we need pics for our licenses!”  
Carrie only had her permit yet and felt uneasy, but she complied.  
They slid inside and put her new shirts on, pinched each other’s cheeks and teased each other’s hair. Carrie’s heart started being harder when Sue shut the door, but she supposed she had brushed over her shoulder in the process and she was having all these weird reactions to the simplest touches lately.  
They took one serious shot each, blinking and giggling at the flash.  
They took pictures leaning on each other’s shoulders, kissing each other’s cheeks.  
Sue’s breath felt warm against her neck.  
Her eyes were not getting used to the flash, and everytime Sue pressed the button without warning her legs jerked and hit the wall of the booth. 

It felt really dark, for a booth in the middle of a brightly neon-lit mall with strategic openings for strategic lighting for girls who needed all the help they could get.  
It also felt like the walls were closing in.  
“I want to go out, Sue” she said, but Sue didn’t hear her, or probably thought it was silly and she was just displeased with how the pics were turning out - of course she would, but then she would know better than worry about instruments of perdition, wouldn’t she?  
Or maybe… maybe she was just thinking all this and not saying out loud. She couldn’t really hear anything but a soft thumping in her ears, the air moving as she mechanically moved her face and arms to Sue’s liking, touching her at every movement because God but why was this so fucking small would it _kill_ these godless wretches to put a slightly bigger vanity-cage in their temple of greed, she couldn’t _breathe-_

Her hands drummed uselessly against the stall door and then she was rolling out on the tiles, under the neon light again. She took a half breath, whipping her head around, and then she noticed all the eyes on her and who could fucking blame them and she begun to cry, curling up so furiously her knees slammed against her forehead.  
_Here we are again oh God what were you thinking to escape in a hole you were born in a hole you should have died in flames in your mommy’s arms you should have died when you were born and now we wouldn’t be in this whole mess would we-_  
Knees around her waist. Fingers on her cheeks.  
“Everyone’s watching” she said with a strangled little cry.  
“There is nothing, nothing I care about less than this, Carrie.” Sue said with a fierceness that made her hands tremble - oh not just her hands, not at all.  
Her hands were on her face again, her cheeks, her lips, her nose. The darkness hurt and still felt like wizened hands with nails in their palms would spring out of the corners at any moment, but looking in Sue’s eyes would kill her, so she kept them shut.

“What went wrong, Carrie? Did I hurt you?”  
Her hand was pawing softly against her chest, rubbing in a slow circle as if her heart was supposed to synchronize with it. Carrie felt like she was going to swoon, roll her eyes in the back of her hand and fall on her face into Sue’s arms and escape this hell a little, but the moment passed and she was left with the darkness and her own quick, spiraling breaths.  
The world turned upside down as Sue pulled her up, throwing her over her shoulder - weightless, not a chunky ugly frog or a statuesque witch. A soft, light, inconsequential petal.  
“It will be bad for the baby” she whimpered, but didn’t hear any answer - _as if you care what happens to the fruit of the devil’s tussling, impure little thing destined to suffering fruit of sinsinsin, if you were ever taught anything you’d wait for it to pop out the devil’s door with a good knife in your hands like your mommy should have and then we wouldn’t be -_

She was in Sue’s car. She pulled down her windows one by one, letting the air in. Carrie drew her knees to her chest and curled as far away as possible from her. The tears were wetting her jeans and burning down her throat, so much when she tried to speak again it felt like she was about to vomit. Sue pulled her into her lap, and rubbed her stomach, humming quietly.  
Her cries turned to a low, continued whimper when their cheeks touched, so overwhelmed by that closeness she felt her skin burn and bubble.  
“What’s wrong, sweetie, what’s happening? Talk to me, please, do we need to go to the hospital? To go home? I don’t know what to do.”  
“My mother had a closet…”  
It came out of her lips as if in delirium, twitching restlessly into her arms.  
“A prayer closet, for when I was bad. There are blood stripes on the door where I banged to get out but every time I did it was a extra half hour, and there’s no God there, no devil either, just me and it’s the worst thing ever, the worst-”

Sue’s shocked sigh warmed the tip of her nose. She kissed the tears down her cheeks.  
“Oh, love, we never knew what was going on in that house, I should have realized. I would have saved you."  
Carrie laughed. Her heart was beating so fast, and yet it felt like a stone in her chest. "No, you couldn't know. You were all happy to imagine I enjoyed being how I was - the long skirt and the prayer at lunch and not being able to-fucking-fucking-leave the house, huh? You couldn't make fun of me otherwise…"  
She doubled over, the bitterness of her words making her sick. She didn't have the strength to get up again and just let herself hang, her hair falling over her eyes. She struggled against the sobs and lost the fight again." It doesn't matter. I had to save myself in the end." 

"You did" Sue's fingers were in her hair now, gently gathering it back. "You did, bless you. You've changed so much. You truly believe in yourself now and I don't know how you did it, when you were raised to think fucking periods were a sin, you're so strong, you're so-"  
Carrie's laughter shattered into a shriek. "I believe in myself! Oh Susie, Susie, you're so sweet."  
She was, she knew that. It would have been all so easy if this was all an elaborate prank, if there was anything in Sue's head now but the deepest worry and tenderness, but she just genuinely, innocently didn't understand and she could not live with that.  
"The only way to save myself was to kill her, can you understand that? She was waiting for me with a knife, but I might have done it even when she wasn't. I was so broken that night. There was only one way out, and I know what it was, and sometimes I wonder if I dreamed that knife in her hand so I wouldn't feel guilty, but I do, I do still feel guilty, and yet I would also have done it anyway because she made me into a person that was worth nothing. I had to…" 

She hid her face in Sue's shoulder, soaking her pretty new shirt in tears. Sue's fingers ran down her spine.  
"You were always worth so much. So much more than any of us."  
"She made me forget. I could move stones with my mind when I was three or so. She locked me in the prayer closet until I almost forgot how to speak, and I was worth nothing again."  
"That's not what I meant."  
Carrie sniffled. She felt so warm and Sue's arms around her waist felt so safe, so unjudging. She felt as if she could let her rock her to sleep right there in the busy parking lot, and she also felt acutely like she did not deserve it. 

"How can this not bother you at at all? I've murdered my mother. I know I had no choice, but you can't know any of that. I had hardly ever fought with her before-"  
"She did not allow you to talk back, of course-"  
"I never even tried, though. One day I hug her and ask her if she can please let me go to the prom and don't complain when she pours hot tea in my face, and one day I murder her. How do you know it will not be the same with you?" 

"I just know"  
Sue took her hands and kissed her palms, making her shiver.  
"How? You're not the one who's a freak who reads minds."  
"Because it didn't come out of nowhere, she's the one who hurt you. That's much more unnatural than anything you can do. Your mother was a Christian! Isn't the virgin Mary meant to be an example for mothers?"  
"The Virgin Mary didn't have a dirty child of sin" she mumbled, rubbing Sue's hand over her cheek to dry her tears.  
"I know you, Carrie White."  
Sue pulled her closer, with a supporting hand on her back. She forced herself to look in her eyes. "You've been here this whole summer, and the worst thing you used your power for was cheating on math finals. You slow down the ice cream truck so all the children have time to come get some and you rescue bugs from the pool. You're good. What happened with your mother, what was about to happen at the prom… It will never happen again, because I will never let anyone hurt you." 

Carrie sniffled again, then timidly slid her arms around Sue's waist. She hummed encouragingly.  
"It's just so hard to believe it's possible."  
Sue bit her lip. "Do you need me to prove it to you?"  
Carrie had no idea how she could possibly do that, but she nodded, completely entranced.  
Sue knelt, nudging herself in the space between the seats, and kissed her palms, knuckles and wrists with such fire Carrie threw her head back, closing their eyes.  
"I want you to be the mother of my baby. There is no one else I could raise her with."  
She burst out laughing, shamelessly, but with a half-bitter laugh that burnt her throat. "How? Should I go buy some horrid suit and tie and take you to church?"  
"Must you laugh? I said the mother, the mother! Listen, there's no one I trust to raise a child with but you. Tommy would have tried, bless his soul, but there's only so much we could do. All parents have children so they can become what they want, most are not as horrid as your mother, but they're all selfish. You're different. You know better. You've seen the worst, and yet you're the best person I know. And who else can get what a baby's thinking before they learn to talk? Mom says that's the worst part. Do this with me." 

Carrie giggled softly, cupping Sue's cheek.  
"I don't know what makes you think I can be trusted to do anything at all. I barely ever had a life. I don't think I'm ready."  
Sue shrugged. There was something sweet and terrible in her eyes - Carrie could barely sustain it. "Neither am I. But I know we'll try our best."  
She was so scared, and yet there was nothing more in the world she wanted.

***

Carrie pressed Tammy to her chest and shrieked in delight as Sue picked her up and deposited her with great self-importance through the threshold.  
"How come you like this so much? I'm way heavier than you!"  
Sue shrugged, twirling on the horridly dusty floor of their new little flat. "I wanted to be a firefighter when I was little, you know."  
"You can still do that" she reminded her, exasperated. _You’re all about rescuing people._  
She’d been stuck in indecision since they first started getting college brochures, and every time she became reasonably sure about something, some comments from her parents or the neighbors and so on threw her on a loop again. They had burnt enough nursing school pamphlets to power a small neighborhood barbecue, and the English faculty ones had started following once her mother mentioned what a good teacher she would make.

 _Some couple, we’d make,_ she wanted to comment, but she was learning to remind herself the Carrie who had set fire to her house was mostly irrelevant, and she’d more likely get an eyebrow raised in confusion from Sue than a worried sigh, let alone a laugh.  
This Carrie was going to be a therapist, and use her power for good, still dubious about the ethics of that as she was, and the enthusiasm of when she had realized how right it felt had sent her singing around the house for a full hour and to Sue this meant she was good.

They had already taken care of the bedrooms somewhat, but all they had in the living room was a collapsing couch the former inhabitants had abandoned and their stereo had taken its last breath during the Christmas holidays, so they just sat down and placed a pile of old tree light where the TV should have been, entertaining themselves watching Macduff valiantly wage his war on them. At some point, Tammy started to make unsatisfied noises and Carrie bopped her nose and handed her to Sue, who took her shirt off to feed her - she didn’t bother with just getting one breast out when it was just them.  
She sighed contentedly and laid her head on Sue’s shoulder, taking the soft baby-head smell, letting her little hand wrap around her finger.

Sue’s face, bent down ecstatically on her little girl, might have made angels cry.  
Her breasts were hard to look at.  
She cleared her throat. “We should go finalize her name tomorrow, if you’re really sure.”  
She felt terrible for how Sue’s shoulders tensed when she said it, but she had to. She didn’t mention they would also decide what to do about potentially declaring her father, but nothing of this struck her as very healthy.  
“I’m sure.” Sue said. “It’s a pretty name, and she won’t be called Ross, so I do have to remember him some way.”  
“You won’t?”  
Carrie had never thought of it this way. To be fair, while she had given a lot of though on whether her life would have been different ot just more violent if her father had lived long enough for her to remember, she could not really see a difference on whether it would have changed much to be called White or Brigham. 

Sue shook her head, biting her lip. “I never married Tommy, after all, and it… it reminds me of a life I could have had I don’t want to be thinking about.”  
She nodded. “I… I understand.” Guilt threatened to swallow her. She rubbed her face, trying not to cry. “I know you can never have that again and… you’re so strong, you never talk about missing him, and I’m so sorry.”  
She buried her face in her hands. She was derailing it about herself again, but she couldn’t help it. Her memories of that night were incandescent scarlet, searing to even just vaguely approach.  
Sue looked up, startled. “Miss him?”  
Her arms wrapped tighter around Tammy and she laughed lightly. “I wish I had a right to miss him. I never even cried for him, you know? You did not that night - I think, at least, but you did at his funeral, and sometimes in your sleep. I never quite managed.”

Carrie frowned. “He loved you so much, you could tell by how he looked at you. You have more right to miss him than anyone.”  
“It’s not enough to be loved.” Sue leaned back and closed her eyes, shifting the baby to her other breast. “You know, I don’t know if I loved him. I enjoyed talking to him, going around with him, sleeping together. I don’t think sex without marriage is a sin, but sex without love?”  
Carrie shrugged. She didn’t know enough about this judge. “It takes a lot of courage to break up right before prom. You still get to miss him since you loved him for a year before that. You wouldn’t be so hard on yourself if all this had changed was breaking up a few weeks too late, and you couldn’t know what happened, you know that.”  
“But did I ever love him?” Sue laughed lightly, shaking her head. “I don’t have a right, maybe, when I was so false with him, but I actually think about him all the time. I can’t figure it out. It’s not that I can’t think of a life where we got married because it hurts - it’s because I dread it. Isn’t this a little like I was relieved that he died?”

“No. No, not at all, not even in the slightest you would ever think something like that!”  
“But I do, in a way, don’t I? I don’t have any idea what would have happened to us if we were together past high school. It was one thing to be a girlfriend and fit in and have everyone like us and say what a nice couple we were - I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much. But being a wife? Two children and a dog and a picket fence and flipping pancakes and knitting stockings and pretending my children are the most perfect in the world so I don’t risk telling anything true to my friends on the other sides of picket fence? I could feel the countdown to it, like a bomb, and I was so scared all the time.”  
Carrie gasped, reaching out with the tip of her thumb to wipe her tears. “This is such nonsense. You loved him, your head is just spinning. Why date him for a year otherwise? People liked you way before you got together.”

“But it’s one thing to- no, I shouldn’t bother you with this. It’s so stupid compared-”  
“More nonsense. You have a right to cry. I want you to tell me everything.”  
Sue looked down in tears, at the baby in her arms and then at their barely touching hands. She smiled a little. “It’s one thing to be liked and it’s one thing to be in love, you know? And I kept thinking having someone love me was at least a good compromise. I was a regular little romantic, I kept falling in love and never with someone who could love me back, and I was so weak. At some point I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Carrie was confused, and a little out of patience with herself for failing to understand a thing when she should be much better at it than most people. “Sue, you’re essentially a princess. How the hell is possible no one you loved ever liked you back?”  
Sue smiled more fully. “There, hold the baby. I think I’m going to drop her and you have better hands than me.” 

Their lips touched before she could say anything about it. Carrie, for the first time in seventeen years reading about it, finally had a good idea of what heaven felt like.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Another Tune (the Baby Makes Three remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26925190) by [Lady_Ganesh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh)




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